Discovery to premiere the second season of 'Pitchmen' on August 19

By Reality TV World staff, 07/26/2010

Discovery has announced it will premiere the second season of Pitchmen on Thursday, August 19 at 9PM ET/PT.

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The reality show's new season will feature infomercial star Anthony "Sully" Sullivan as he recovers following the unexpected death of Billy Mays -- his longtime friend, pitch partner and first-season Pitchmen co-star.

Like Pitchmen's first season, the new season will follow Sullivan as he travels the country conducting "pitch-a-thons" with inventors who want his help bringing their products to market and selling them to television viewers. However this season he'll be evaluating products and filming test market infomercials without Mays, who suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep at his Tampa, FL home last June.

The Hillsborough County medical examiner's office initially ruled heart disease the likely cause of the 50-year-old's death, but the final August autopsy report added cocaine as a contributory cause of death, stating that the drug "caused or contributed to the development of his heart disease, and thereby contributed to his death." In addition, the report also stated that Mays had used cocaine within a few days of his death but was not under the influence of the drug when he died.

Mays' wife, Deborah Mays, and business associates subsequently disputed and criticized the cocaine finding and stated they were not aware of any non-prescription drug usage by Mays.

Deborah Mays later released the results of an independent autopsy results review in which a New Jersey medical examiner she hired concluded Mays was not a chronic cocaine user and the drug did not contribute to the Pitchmen star's death but did not refute the earlier report that he had used cocaine in the days prior to his death.

"Billy's family and I have never agreed with the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's conclusion that cocaine use contributed to Billy's death," she said. "We believed at the time -- and believe even more now based on Dr. Manion's report -- that the conclusions drawn by the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner were not supported by the findings of the autopsy, nor by Billy's medical history."